One of the many features that smartphone users look for these days is the quality of the camera built into them. We all love taking selfies. There are many apps in the market that help users enhance their selfies. Among the many that have gone viral (in US) in the recent past is a Chinese app called Meitu. A new report published by CNN claims that this app is actually tracking on every move of its users.
The app — which adds colourful, caricature-like features and accessories to the user’s photos, has been under fire for sneaky data collection. The report suggests that Meitu’s developers wrote a piece of code into the app so that the advertisers could see who is using it and what they are viewing. “Most of the sketchy things being reported in Meitu are (of) the numerous ad trackers baked into the software, which can generate revenue for the software authors,” forensic expert Jonathan Zdziarkski told CNNTech. “It’s rather widespread problem among mobile apps and not just on any one platform.”
Meitu app
The same report states that Meitu might not necessarily sell user data to advertisers but there are other apps that collect similar information that might. “We’ve come to accept ad and analytics trackers in our mobile apps,” Zdziarski said. “Now, it’s turning into ‘crapware’ that delivers a dozen or more trackers in the form of something cute the user wants to use,” he added.
Meitu app has been accused of collecting user data information such as the location of the user, the information of the user’s mobile provider, the user’s IP address and their unique identifier generated to track them.
Here is how you can stop such apps from tracking you:
For iOS users:
Go to settings, click privacy and toggle on Limit Ad Tracking.
For Android users:
Go to settings, tap on the Gear menu located on the top right corner of the Apps screen, choose app permissions and turn off the permission to obtain tracking information.
Note that this might crash your other apps as well.
